Wix and Squarespace have made it genuinely easy to put a website online yourself. That's a good thing. But "easy to build" and "good for your business" aren't the same question, and the honest answer to which you should choose depends entirely on what you need the site to do. Here's a clear comparison, without the sales pitch in either direction.
- Choose Wix or Squarespace if you're testing an idea, have a tiny budget, or need something simple online this week and you're happy to build it yourself.
- Choose a custom website if the site is a serious channel for winning customers, you're in a competitive market, or you want it to look and perform like nobody else's.
- The real trade-off isn't cost, it's ownership, performance and how high you can climb in search over time.
Where DIY builders genuinely shine
Let's be fair to them. Wix and Squarespace are cheap month to month, fast to get started, and you don't need to hire anyone. Their templates look decent out of the box, and they handle hosting, security and the SEO basics for you. For a side project, a brand-new business testing whether an idea has legs, or a simple presence for a business that gets most of its work by word of mouth, they can be exactly the right call. Don't let anyone talk you into a $10,000 site to sell a weekend market stall.
Where they start to cost you
The limits show up as you grow. Template-based design means your site can end up looking like thousands of others, and you can only push the layout so far. Performance is often heavier than a hand-built site, which matters because slow pages get shown less by Google and lose impatient visitors. The SEO ceiling is lower once you're competing seriously, because you don't fully control the technical details. And crucially, you never really own the site: it's locked to the platform, so leaving means rebuilding. The monthly fee also never stops, so over five years a "cheap" builder can quietly cost more than a one-off custom build.
Wix and Squarespace vs a custom website, side by side
| Factor | Wix / Squarespace | Custom-built site |
|---|---|---|
| Upfront cost | Low ($0 to ~$50/month) | Higher (from around $1,500) |
| Ongoing cost | Subscription forever | Hosting only (low) |
| Design | Template-based, limited | Fully custom to your brand |
| Speed & Core Web Vitals | Often heavier, slower | Tuned to load fast |
| SEO ceiling | Fine for basics, capped higher up | High, full technical control |
| Editing it yourself | Very easy | Easy, with a handover |
| Your time to build | High (you build it) | Low (we build it) |
| Ownership | Locked to the platform | Fully yours and portable |
| Best for | Testing an idea, tiny budget | Winning customers at scale |
So which should you choose?
If your website is essentially a business card and you're watching every dollar, start on a builder. There's no shame in it, and you can always upgrade later. But if the site is meant to be a real source of enquiries and sales, if you're competing against businesses that take their online presence seriously, or if looking generic would undersell you, a custom build is the better investment. It costs more up front and repays it in performance, credibility and the ceiling it gives you to grow.
Starting on a builder and upgrading later
Plenty of our clients did exactly this: launched on Wix or Squarespace, proved the idea worked, then moved to a custom site once the traffic and enquiries justified it. Moving across is a rebuild rather than a simple export, since these platforms don't let you take the site with you, but you keep your content and domain, and we set up redirects so your search rankings carry over. If you're at that point, see how we approach web design and online stores, or read how much a website costs in Sydney. We work right across the city, including Parramatta, the Inner West, the North Shore and the Eastern Suburbs.
